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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

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397 



EXTRACTS FROM 

AN UNBROKEN CORRESPONDENCE 



The Living are so stupid 
when they speak of the Others. 

Maurice Maeterlinck, 
The Blue Bird 



Published by 

Insurance Press, Inc. 

Boston, Mass. 






\n 



Copyright 

IQX6 

Insurance Press, Inc. 



c^:^ 



DEC 28 1916 
4457206 



EXTRACTS FROM 
AN UNBROKEN CORRESPONDENCE 



As I take up the pen in the old familiar fashion, 
yet with what change in conditions, I am absolutely 
free from the thought that any message is passing 
from my mind to yours, that any reply will ever 
reach me, that the act has any validity whatsoever 
save that of affording a relief from insupportable 
tension. Let me then review the history of the 
weeks which have passed since the tidings of your 
death came, thus putting away from me by this 
act what I may not speak and addressing you 
as of old, simply out of habit. 

I was returning from a short sojourn in Manton 
Hills, where I had been seeing again the places 
frequented by us in our unthinking youth. Antici- 
pating your retlirn and our marriage at no remote 
period, I had revelled in reminders of the past and 
in suggestions of the future. As I had taken my 



way from one landmark to another, dwelling on the 
time when we should together revisit those scenes 
— not less eager but simply more comprehending 
than before — I had allowed myself to heap joy 
on joy. Something of this I was trying to express 
in a letter to you which I took with me unfinished 
to the train. Until the moment of collection for 
the foreign post I stood by the receptacle adding 
a few words which struggled to fuse time and space. 
Still in a maze of joyous anticipation, I mechani- 
cally took a proffered paper, which I carried un- 
opened. In the carriage, a fellow passenger asked 
to borrow the paper for a moment and as he handed 
it back, civily calling my attention to an item of 
impersonal interest, my eye fell on the fateful lines 
cabled the night before. A few moments later, 
on my own desk, I found a private dispatch con- 
firming the other. 

Our schoolbooks used to tell us of experiments 

with a mouse in a vacuum. I find that under 

circumstances not so very different, a human being 

may be constrained to keep on living. Memo- 

4 



randa show me that during the weeks which followed 
I met all my routine engagements, together with 
some popularly supposed to belong to recreation 
and pleasure. I fear that I sadly puzzled some un- 
suspecting friends by my inconsistent behaviour, and 
I know that I availed myself to the full of certain 
undefended creatures who so handily serve as 
absorbents for the acrid humours of the privileged. 

This mood was marked off by a letter from 
your son — like the gentleman he was born, the 
boy writes a good note — asking me to join a group 
of friends in the mortuary rite, day and hour being 
conditioned on the arrival of the foreign steamer. 
He added that the group would be small, owing 
to the fact that so many had not returned from 
the country and politely urged my attendance 
as that of an old and valued friend of the family. 
His mother had taught me to love honor more and 
I could accept this unconscious challenge in its own 
free spirit. 

The group was indeed small in number but it 
was great in friends. Besides those nearest you 
5 



by tie of blood were those scarcely less than kin 
through years of attachment. Dear L. was detained 
by illness but one did not need to ask from whose 
hand came the soft-hued flowers which parted 
the grass here and there. Good X. was there and 
his noble rival Y., each with his consort of course. 
It seemed to be a time of much preoccupation with 
the clergy for the office fell to a youth, hurried from 
the tennis field, I do not doubt. Oh that youth! 
I do not know what restrained my impious hand. 
As it was speech trod hard on the heels of thought in 
this mad fashion: "To make that gentleness, that 
grace before you, ages have given of their best 
and you cannot spare a moment, a cadence. Put 
off that garb which you will not grow up to in seven 
incarnations, get down to earth, and find out for 
yourself what it is to live." But as no one moved 
to take me into custody I infer that I kept up a 
fair show of propriety to the close. 

Your son was painfully unnerved for a time and 
the ever ready arm of H. was a welcome support. 
Yet, before we parted, I saw that grief would speedily 
6 



be put away as a garment at the close of the season. 
None the less the garment this time has the measure 
of a true man. 

As the moment of leave-taking approached, those 
of us who could claim no actual kinship withdrew 
into the background. I in my impersonal char- 
acter of family friend occupied myself with culling a 
few mortalia from a neighboring plot. Mesdames 
X. and Y. on the extreme limit of the group but not 
far from me, bulging against the declining day, 
were engaged in tearing to shreds that fiction of 
beauty which my less discriminating sex had so 
persistently woven about you. Absolute finality 
reached, the ladies turned to summon their re- 
spective lords with pointed reminders of the lateness 
of the hour and evening engagements. 

I have always noticed that after a committal, 
the flow of human feeling seems to take a fresh 
start and this case was no exception. The claims 
of old friendship were urged; there were pressing 
invitations to call, to dine, to do anything or 
everything, to bind together the common life 
7 



remaining, as if, thus strengthened it could delay 
the inevitable doom. The return to the warm pre- 
cincts of the cheerful day was duly acclaimed. With 
your beloved brother N. who had been deeply 
moved and still seemed badly broken up, the 
experience seemed to sharpen a naturally keen 
perception of the frailty of the body and the insist- 
ence of disease. He complained of the dampness, 
imperceptible to the rest, urged almost unseemly 
haste and rejoiced in the approach to pavements 
and sign-boards. At his request, I attended him 
to his rooms, where he waxed talkative on the 
sombre side. All his line for generations, stock and 
branch, it seemed, had yielded to over-mastering 
fate. I reminded him how exceedingly inconvenient 
it would be to have some of his predecessors still 
about, rallied him on his last escapade, and left 
him with good promise of a nap before dinner. 

Released, I drove quickly back over the route 

of the afternoon, dismissing my carriage at some 

distance from my destination. Now, I thought 

that I have met all the demands of this direful 

8 



day in that complete detachment to which con- 
ditions called me, now that I have discharged the 
life-long trust which she placed with me, if any- 
thought and expression remain to her, something 
from her will penetrate to me in this utter isolation 
and privacy. 

L.'s flowers in the grass still lifted their pale disks 
as if expectant and the cool of the evening seemed 
to bring out a perfume unnoticed before. But 
of you — nothing, nothing; not fineness of sound 
but utter silence. Instead of some consoling, some 
caressing influence, there came the shadow of 
age. I had never thought of time but as the vehicle 
of hope while you lived. Now, age leered and ogled 
and tottered before me, the jest of time. 



No, I was right. Do not contend. Death ends all 
— for all, even the just. Do you remember how 
we watched a wreath of mist thrown off from the 
flood as if by a supreme effort, laughing in light 
and color? For a moment that wreath of rain- 
9 



bows lived all but consciously with us. It is in- 
conceivable that those selfsame particles, together 
with that accident of light, should be reassembled. 
And shall the human life, you used to say, evolved 
from a mightier, subtler, more mysterious force 
be scarcely more permanent than a chance im- 
pulse of the torrent? But why should it? For the 
human life just as truly finds its value, its essence 
not in its length but in its relations and its intensity. 
The stream of time moves on, evolving new forms 
from new combination, never reproducing what 
it has passed by. 



Bound early in life by a marriage which had its 
source in the worldy ambition of those who should 
have protected you, to a degree that you did not 
realize at the time, how true you were to that tie! 
True? How you cherished it, idealized it, grieved 
over the manhood that might have been. How 
you taught your children to forgive if they could 
not respect their father. When the vigil ended 
10 



and others saw only an unhonored grave, you saw 
the life over which you had yearned, come into its 
own at last. 

How easy conquest would have been for you. 
Yet you scorned the very thought of it. You kept 
even friendship waiting at the door. 



Since I last wrote you, I have had a fruitless 
jaunt of some months. I had thought that I might 
gain in cathedral or gallery, from music or from 
scenery closely associated with you, a certain 
pleasurable warmth of memory which would dispel 
the clogging torpor of my spirit. But the moment 
which I sought always fled before me and now I 
11 



realize that I am not to know it. In a few days I 
shall be on my homeward voyage, counting the 
hours between me and activity, drudgery, anything 
save this futility. 



But the homelier setting, the merely human 
relation yields far more generously. Again from the 
old garden seat — a book in my hand, perhaps — 
I see you at the low farmhouse window intent on 
some gay sewing to put the grim sitting room out 
of conceit with itself that very night. The children, 
sated with play, crowd around you invading your 
ocean of roses and castles, and peacocks. You hold 
them adroitly in check without stopping your 
needle. 



And the night after the accident at G., your 
resource, your touch. You, who might have been 
the centre of a gay salon. 

12 



Suppose the hymnist's heaven were realized and 
I permitted to gaze upon you now and then under 
your halo through endless years. What would that 
be to me? Rather memory and your hat with the 
roses, the one that you didn't like to wear, you know. 



When I wrote you just before sailing I did not 
make a clean breast of it. I did not admit my 
mental conflict in regard to Griese. From the 
first I had taken for granted that I should not give 
myself the needless pain of visiting the place where 
I last saw you, the place which had stood for the 
beginning only to usher in the end. But Griese 
did not let me go so easily. The whole continent 
seemed to be daring me to buy a ticket for Griese. 
At last, only three days before the sailing of the 
steamer, I picked up the gauntlet. 

It turned out that poor silly Griese had sold 
herself to cheap money and the throng with which 
13 



that is current. Everything was changed. The 
very stones had lost their character. Memory 
decHned to bless this tawdry shrine. I resolved to 
depart early in the morning, leaving a margin of 
one train for the steamer. After wretched hours of 
wakefulness, I fell into sleep toward morning from 
which I awoke with a new thought in a clear and 
competent mind. Before me was the vision of the 
sitting room, now so degraded, but then as you 
made it ; yourself at the table before your travelling 
writing case, your face wearing an expression of 
much concern as you spoke of an old school friend, 
probably in great need, whose circumstances you 
hoped to relieve on your return to America. I see 
again the movement of your hand — good God — 
your fingers, each one living, sentient to the very 
rim of the nail, as you tucked away in some recess a 
letter or slip evidently relating to this purpose. 

I was too selfishly happy at the time to take 

cognizance of any extraneous details of name or 

place or to understand how any one could be down 

in luck. To recover the paper, perhaps a mere 

14 



memorandum, would probably prove an Impossible 
task even if I cared to undertake it. But recover 
the address I must. By delaying until the second 
train I made space for another visit to the old sites, 
including the sitting room, hoping that association 
would help me out, but to no purpose. On the 
train all was excitement as most of my fellow 
passengers were like myself racing with the ship, 
but even then I noted a persistent turn of my mind 
toward the last third of the alphabet, and a dawning 
suggestion of something geological in the name of 
the town. 

On the deck, at last I took up the alphabet 
systematically, making lists of surnames, beginning 
with each letter, studying the ship's lists and every 
other form of literature accessible for suggestions, — 
starting at my task early in the morning and keeping 
at it until late in the evening, but no letter and no 
name gave the clue. This afternoon just as I was 
applying myself anew to the middle of the alphabet, 
a steward brought me a note which asked me to 
grant a few minutes to the sons of an old acquaintance 
15 



who were fellow passengers and had discovered my 
identity. I had previously noticed these two 
prepossessing young men, not suspecting the relation 
and at another time should have been delighted to 
see them. As it was I assented grudgingly enough. 
The eagerness of my new acquaintances to know 
more of their father's youth made an excuse for 
reminiscence. We found, too, that an old tutor 
of mine had been a senior classical professor in their 
recent college days and we gleefully reviewed the 
traits known to me in the grub and persisting in the 
scarab. I parted from them rather late in the 
evening and emerging somewhat from my holiday 
mood found my consciousness suddenly impaled by 
a horizontal line rather more than half an inch long 
with something — a letter at the end of it. The 
worn page in my Latin grammar— the only thing 
that one ever really learns — came before me and I 
saw my letter, at the end of the row of liquids —r. 
You remember that the first three /, m, n, went 
glibly enough and then there was that straggler 
at the end to be cuffed and pounded into line. I 
16 



never dreamed that I should live to speak a good 
word for him. 

Methinks, the whole surname is mine now. 



When I wrote you last evening, I little expected 
to be able to report so soon another triumph as it 
were conferred upon me. As I told you before, 
the place had a geological suggestion about it and 
this has taken me through all the ship's literature 
again, including descriptions of scenery, which had 
the sole virtue of making the rest of the novel seem 
lively by comparison. Since I felt sure that when I 
should take down a long unused treatise on Geology 
I should find my town, I decided for this last day 
before land would be sighted to give myself up to 
the fascination of the sea thus far ignored. In this 
equipoise I sat looking out over the waste before 
me. My mind drifted toward lesser landlocked 
waters and the phenomena of inland saltiness, and 
all at once I had my word— Elton of course. I 
shall verify this suggestion by recourse to that 
17 



selfsame book as soon as I land, and then if I am 
right, I shall make a journey to Elton, taking the 
most probable from a long list of competitors. 
Felicitations? 



The thing is done. An output of superadded 
signs, all finely weathered, guided me into the 
presence of the local depositary of life, death, and 
mortgages throughout Elton and the country side. 
After half an hour's chat, I saw that my new ac- 
quaintance had the faculty of speech and of silence 
in equal degree. I had found my man and indeed 
my woman, though I verified the latter theory for 
myself and actually recognized in a drooping figure 
moving aimlessly about a decaying home place, the 
somewhat defaced negative of a pink and gold 
member of a terrifying group of school friends, by 
which I found you surrounded once when I went up 
to pay my youthful devoirs at T. 

As the train hurried homeward, cleaving the hills 
and bearing down into the sunset, I experienced a 
18 



lightness of heart which I had not expected to know 
again. With the return to familiar mutely remind- 
ing objects, with nightfall, with loss of the stimulus 
afforded by my task now completed, void and dark- 
ness have settled down upon me again. Yet now 
and then a rift as a moment ago when I read the 
letter of acknov/ledgment forwarded by my accom- 
plice in Elton, addressed in hand writing not badly 
off the original pink and gold, "To My Unknown 
Benefactor." A new role for me. Don't tell me 
for Heaven's sake that I have bungled it. 



Again the young grain is a billowing mist upon 
your hills. The air is vibrant with life. Perfume 
puts forth its insistent reminder. How is it that 
you are out of all this? 

In this thronging grass are sounds beyond the 
compass of my ear. Perhaps there are scents so 
fine that they escape me. Has the mind also its 
unsuspected limits? Is what I call loss, void but 
my own impact against these barriers to apprehen- 
19 



sion? Am I to die and to pass into dust with the 
gamut incomplete? 



Remembering your constant sohcitude regarding 
your brother, I have made it my habit to look in 
upon from time to time. Of. late I have noticed a 
lowering of tone evinced both in the step and in the 
eye, and was hardly surprised to learn of his serious 
illness just as I was going out of town for a couple 
of days in response to an urgent call. On my 
return I found him indeed very ill from a sudden 
stroke. He talked with some difficulty yet with 
perfect coherency. For the first time in years N. 
had nothing to say about shattered health or 
insistent mortality. He seemed to avoid these 
topics and to dwell on those of wider interest and 
more cheerful character. I asked him of course 
what I could do for him and he directed me to a 
compartment in his open desk from which I took 
a parcel of papers folded and labelled with a care of 
which I had not thought N. capable. As I returned 
20 



to his bedside he asked me to read from the file, 
beginning with first member. I was astonished to 
find that I had in my hand a package of your letters 
to N. extending from the days of youth to the 
maturity of lives widely differing, yet indissolubly 
united in the family bond. The thought of reading 
these letters aloud was overwhelming but — com- 
mend me, my saint, for this time I really deserve it 
— after getting myself in hand under pretence of 
adjusting the light, I began as N. had directed and 
read one letter after the other, all so free from 
yourself and therein so revealing yourself. When- 
ever I gave sign of stopping with the fear that 
the excitement might be too much for N., the 
look in his face constrained me to go on. At last, 
I really did stop — perhaps because we had both 
become so thoughtful that words, even from those 
pages, seemed out of place. After I had read a 
letter or two, N. reached out the arm which he 
could use and rested it on my shoulder. Gradually, 
his hand slipped down to my hand and we sat together 
like two school girls, lost in recollection, silent, 

21 



and yet not sad. A strange impulse came over 
me in the presence of one so soon to pass from out 
the known and visible and I do not know what 
folly I might have uttered had not the doctor 
entered, smug and brisk, at the critical moment 
bringing my mood and my visit to an end. 
But you know what I would have said. 



I called again the next morning. There was still 
breath but the lifelong companion of breath had 
gone about his own business and had no sign for 
neighbor or friend. 

And so N. with his pills and powders and 
poses, N. too had a lantern under his coat. I am 
beginning to think that it never does to decline to 
take any body seriously. And what about some 
of my other theories? Ah, forbear, it is not like 
you to follow up an advantage so mercilessly. 



22 



The last rite for N. took me to-day to that spot 
which I left with anguish one autumn evening ten 
years ago. All that I then apprehended had been 
worked out in the shuddering flesh, but mingling 
with and almost surmounting the sense of pain 
came the sense of the increased dimensions of 
experience. It was as if you and I had moved an 
infinite distance from that spot and its immediate 
associations, not by the same road and yet not 
apart. The lettering before me seemed remote, I 
could almost say strangely futile. The obverse 
of that field of sleep, the struggling, aspiring world 
outside seemed more related to you. I shall never 
go so far from you again. 



True to the ancient friendship, your son A. came 
to see me to-day to announce his engagement. It 
seems that he has been engaged for a long time to 
a nice girl but they have not been able to marry 
owing to A.'s responsibilities in life of which I do 
not doubt that charges for poor H. form a large part. 
23 



Why did I not know about these things before? 
Why did not A. tell me? Why did you not tell me? 
(Pray consider this last scrupulously erased. I 
could hardly be less rational just now if I were 
going to marry the girl myself.) 

The wedding cards will be out within a fortnight. 



Since I last wrote you, I have had the first long 
illness of my life. I seemed to be seeking you 
through crowded streets, winding passages, parched 
desert and arctic ice— heroic hospitar methods 
kindly supplying the last feature — but always in 
vain after the manner of dreams. At last came 
something so different in character. I did not 
recognize the place. We seemed to be a little apart 
from each other, not far from others but yet by 
ourselves. I have often tried to think what you 
wore. In your expressio'n was a sweet seriousness, 
one with the brooding calm which shut us in. I 

24 



only know that I felt without surprise that all 
questions had been answered, that all doubts had 
been removed, that peace rested on all we had and 
were. These were but the vagaries of a sick man. 
But in some way they seem so compelling, and so 
permanent that I cannot forbear writing of them. 



My convalescence, beginning in the early spring 
has kept pace with the advancing season. For the 
first time since childhood I have allowed spring and 
summer to have their own way with me. Never 
since tender years have I been so grinned at through 
the tree tops. Never have I scared up so many 
dryads and hamadryads. Through all I have been 
conscious of a diffused sense not perhaps of your 
presence but of yourself. If I have not written 
frequently of late it is because I have felt moved to 
write only somewhat like this: "It is to-day as 
it was yesterday, only more positive, more delight- 
ful;" or "To-day has been so good. Dare I hope 

that to-morrow will be like it?" All this is of course 
25 



but the experience of an invalid awaking to life 
again after the depletion of illness and abandoned 
to the seclusion of his state. 

You know I often used to tell you in times of 
perfect attunement of earth and air and pushing 
life, that to be resolved into nature (meaning in the 
right company of course) would be no hard fate. 
It is as if I felt the first stir of the transformation! 
Luckily autumn is hurrying on to put a stop to 
these flights. 



The pipers have ceased. The flags are furled. 
Summer has gone. I write by the fire in my quiet 
room. Yet still that pervading sense as if your 
life current were mingling with mine. 



I might have known that my watchful opponent 
would score a point for that "spiritual body" which 
she has often so eloquently urged. Evidently the 

26 



points of my armor must be tightened up as for 
serious business. 



Here's X in affliction at last, poor fellow, and 
sends for me. And since last evening I have been 
undergoing one of my attacks of buoyancy (None of 
those celestial airs if you please. My habits remain 
irreproachable) of buoyancy, I say. Such as a man 
has a right to when the influenza has begun to thaw 
out of his joints a bit. Nevertheless I must screw 
myself together and go. 

Dear old Y.'s relict was there in a camel-load 
of crape and with grief torrential, exerting such a 
pressure that our truly bereaved X. rose to positive 
vivacity. 



Do not be alarmed. You will not have Mrs. X. 
with you for keeps just yet. She will be sure to 
have forgotten something and come back. 



27 



Feeling rather out of sorts the other day I con- 
sulted Dr. H. Professional gratification came 
writhing up through sympathy as he told me that 
he found in my condition a sad confirmation of a 
theory he had formed at the time of my illness. 
Once more a little pin bores through the castle wall. 
Think of it, — that great bastion of a fellow you 
used to know. I have set things to rights, put a 
cup in the mouth of a sack here and there, notably 
in A. 's, and now I shall have nothing to do but write 
to you as long as I live. 

And what then? O madam, madam, I sometimes 
think that you, even you are just a bit nagging. 



Well, my dear, have your way. It's inseparable 
from you. We will declare a truce for the brief 
remainder of my span. Besides I am under bonds 
not to get into excitement or controversy. 



28 



I have just returned from a Christmas frolic at 
your son's. A. is the same fine fellow as ever but I 
have always shrunk from his hospitalities. The 
fact is that his oldest little girl has a halfway resem- 
blance to you which I have not been able to meet* 
Frequently I have turned away from her as if in 
rebuke. But this time I resolved to go and to play 
fair. After the other guests had gone I drew the 
little girl up to me and fastened to her necklace 
that miniature of yourself made in Paris which 
no one save ourselves has seen since it left the 
artist's hands. 

By the way, the young fellow — der Geistliche — of 
that dreadful afternoon so distant in years yet so 
near the quick forever, was at the party. They 
are going to make him something very high up. 
Everybody was congratulating him and after the 
first shock of contact I joined in, layers below lay- 
man as 1 am. He cannot get too much experience. 



29 



Glorious days and I still shamble forth. Not an 
exaggeration altogether, madam. I do shamble a 
little now. But do not fear for yourself. You are 
just as trim and free of step as ever, companion 
of my — senile? — fancy. And how you set off 
those new furs I have just chosen for you —quite 
the thing, I am assured. 



A.'s boys visit me almost daily, bringing their 
exploits and penalties; also their toys and pets. 
My cherished tomes are displaced and smart nags 
and cars look out from their improvised stalls. 
I manage to keep one chair by sitting in it. As for 
my dignity, I have forgotten what it was like. 
A mangy cur brought in from the street knows 
where some of it went. 



Called out of my library for a moment this 
morning I found on returning that my chair had 
been commandeered as an automobile. Appro- 

30 



priately it became disabled and was towed off at 
an early stage of the game leaving me without a 
prop. The nurse coming to convoy the homeward 
trip brought in her arms the baby, a mallet-headed 
little chub. (My esteemed correspondent once 
critical but now nothing if not a grandmother 
probably thinks him a beauty.) He is as yet bald 
and speechless, but he eyes me as if only biding his 
time. It is evidently the part of prudence to 
vacate a position which I cannot expect to hold 
much longer. 



I lay down my pen to go to the window. It's a 
wild night with every promise of a long storm. I 
fear those poor little beggars will not get out of 
the nursery to-morrow. 

Let me tell you while there is yet time how much 
A. reminds me of Richard in happy ways. All 
traits of the father which were lovable, all sugges- 
tions of strength are in the son graven in deeper 

31 



lines and massed into character. The charm that 
we knew reappears — and stays. I know that this 
will please you. 



I have a curious feeling as if I had died somewhere 
along back. 



Floored, but will write soon. Think of me as in 
no pain. 

"And waved along the vault her kindled brand." 



It flickers — it clouds— it tarries — it emerges — it 
stays— it glows — it is. 

They thought that I was dying yesterday. They 
little dream how much I am alive. 



My hand — 

They have put the pen back into my hand. 

As if we needed it I 

32 



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